The present invention relates to a system for selecting and purchasing products from an assortment from a predetermined manufacturer or retailer.
It often happens that a person purchases a product for another person and offers this product in the form of a gift. Unfortunately, even if the product in question is of the type desired by the beneficiary of the gift, it also often happens that the person wished to receive another product of the same type; either the one received is not suitable for the beneficiary, or he/she already possesses an identical product.
The principle of the gift certificate or gift voucher is known and allows a person to acquire such a certificate or gift voucher in exchange for the payment of a certain price and to offer this certificate or gift voucher as a gift to another person who can then use it with a product distributor who accepts this method of payment for their goods. This system avoids the above-mentioned drawback connected with a gift consisting of a product which was not suitable for its beneficiary but amounts in the end to offering a sum of money to be used on different products and not a product proper, which displays on the part of the giver an attention to the likings of the beneficiary and therefore has more emotive value for the latter than a certificate or gift voucher. Moreover, the beneficiary of a gift certificate or gift voucher must travel to a sales outlet in order to make a choice amongst the products offered for sale in this outlet and use his/her certificate or gift voucher on the spot to acquire one of these products.
Another system is known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,633,849 which relates to methods and systems for electronically forwarding an online gift. In more details, a gift giver, while online with a gift server node, selects an online product for a recipient from a variety of products supplied from one or more vendors. Once a product selection is made, the product selection is sent to a queue on a gift server node while the recipient is notified of the product, typically via an electronic mail message. In response to the notification, the recipient then connects online to the gift server node, reads the product selection from the queue and determines whether to accept exchange or forward the product.
Unfortunately, the system according to U.S. Pat. No. 6,633,849 does not allow the gift giver to offer a physical gift to the recipient, thereby reducing the pleasure of the recipient who does not receive an object from hand to hand.
Moreover, the recipient needs to be connected to the internet and has to look at the gift through the personal computer without having really seen it. In addition, the gift giver does not really choose the kind of gifts he wants to offer to the recipient because this latter can exchange the offered product and even the kind of offered product.